Vatican Defends Unborn at UN World Summit: There is No International Right to Abortion

SUSAN YOSHIHARA MAY 26, 2016 | 6:35PM NEW YORK, NY

(C-Fam) The Vatican reminded world leaders there is no international right to abortion at a global summit in Istanbul this week. The Holy See rejected European proposals to create a new right to abortion under the Geneva Conventions, also known as international humanitarian law or the laws of war.

The “Holy See emphasizes that there is no right to abortion under international human rights law or international humanitarian law and repeats the exhortation of the Secretary-General that States and non-State parties to armed conflict must refrain from ‘expansive and contentious interpretations’ of international law,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State.

The statement was meant to expose European efforts to define children in the womb who are conceived as a result of sexual violence in conflict as a “war wound” that must be aborted in order to “heal” the mother.

Parolin spoke at the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit, a UN conference meant to bolster flagging humanitarian response to massive refugee flows and help 130 million people living in humanitarian crises.

Denmark announced it would show its leadership in humanitarianism by funding “sexual and reproductive health and rights, against gender based violence,” and “the right to have comprehensive sexuality education, and also the right for abortion.” To that end, Denmark said it would increase funding to UNFPA’s work in war-ravaged Syria. Denmark is a top donor to UNFPA, International Planned Parenthood, UN Women, and Amplify Change.

The Netherlands, another major UN donor, said, “women and girls should have access to sexual and reproductive health services and supplies including contraceptives, safe abortion, and post-rape care.”

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But when six European nations told the U.S. last year at the Human Rights Council that the law violates the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. pushed back. At the Summit, the U.S. avoided the issue altogether in its prepared remarks.

Advocates for children conceived after sexual violence point out that the focus on aborting these children makes helping them and their mothers much harder. They report tens of thousands of such children suffer stigmatization and discrimination due to the circumstances of their births. Hundreds more are likely to suffer that fate who are being born as a result of violence by armed groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.

The Holy See spoke out for these children, encouraging “religious institutions and Catholic organizations to accompany victims of rape in crises situations, who, in turn, need effective and ongoing psychological, spiritual and material assistance for themselves as well as their children, conceived and born of rape.”

Venezuela is now in an advanced state of political and economic collapse. Such is the fruit of seventeen years of the “21st century socialism” pioneered by Hugo Chávez and pursued by his successor Nicolás Maduro. On a daily basis, the reality of Venezuelans is one of empty shops, massive corruption, triple-digit inflation, an absence of necessities like food and medicine, and omnipresent violence as law and order breaks down. This is the logical consequence of a populist regime that, in the name of “the people,” nationalized entire industries, demolished the central bank’s independence, ploughed oil-revenues into inefficient and corrupt state-owned enterprises, printed money to cover escalating government spending, and then tried to control the rapidly-deteriorating situation through price and currency controls.

Politically-speaking, Venezuela is now one of the world’s most polarized and repressed societies. The government regularly uses the police and its own “national militia” to terrorize its critics. Most of the press has been muzzled and the judiciary’s independence severely compromised. Civil society has, for all intents and purposes, been pulverized—all in the name of the people’s socialist revolution.

The one institution that’s maintained its integrity in this midst of Venezuela’s disarray is the Catholic Church. Catholic university students have played a central role in bringing the regime’s abuses to international attention. Likewise, Venezuela’s Catholic bishops have been unstinting in their criticism of the Chavistas’ economic and political experimentation. In January 2015, for instance, the Venezuelan bishops’ conference formally denounced the nation’s economic crisis as the result of “a “politico-economic system of a socialist, Marxist, or Communist nature.” That’s strong language. The bishops also condemned the regime’s demonization of its opponents, its demagogic language, its systematic violation of human rights, the imprisonment of thousands of government opponents, and the torture of political prisoners.

The Church and the populists

Given these facts, many have wondered why, of all the Latin American heads of states who could have attended the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences recent conference to mark the 25th anniversary of Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, the only two present were left-wing populists: Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Are we to believe that not a single other serving Latin American head of state was able and willing to attend?

Since Pope Francis often states that realities are more important than ideas, let’s recall some basic realities about presidents Correa and Morales. Both are professed admirers of Chávez and committed to what Correa calls “socialism of the 21st century” or what Morales describes as “communitarian socialism.”

Both men have also followed the classic populist playbook. This involves (1) dismantling constitutional restraints on power; (2) blaming their nations’ problems on foreigners and foreign interests; (3) following a political logic of internal confrontation with those designated as “enemies of the people”; (4) fostering a cult of personality around a charismatic leader; and (5) creating large constituencies of supporters through disbursement of state largesse. The result has not only been political oppression. The economies of Bolivia and Ecuador are now formally classified as “repressed” in the 2016Index of Economic Freedom. That means they are among the least free, most corrupt, and statist in the world.

The fact, however, that Correa and Morales were invited to speak at a conference at the Holy See reflects the Church’s ambiguous relationship with left-populist movements and governments in recent years. The Venezuelan bishops’ willingness, for instance, to name and shame a populist regime so directly for its destructive policies is the exception rather than the rule.

During his years as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis was censorious, sometimes vividly, of aspects of the populist presidencies of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner. Yet in July 2015, the pope appeared with Morales before the “Second World Meeting of Popular Movements” and delivered a speech which had more than a populistedge to it. Indeed, in the numerous addresses, press conferences, and interviews given by Francis since becoming pope, it’s hard to find any clear criticism of left-populist policies that comes close to matching his impassioned denouncements of market economies.

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Opportunity in the darkness?

The good news for Latin America is that populist movements and governments are on the wane. Late last year, the main Perónist candidate for the Argentine presidency was defeated in national elections. In February this year, Evo Morales lost a referendum that would have permitted him to seek a fourth term. In Venezuela, the opposition now controls the National Assembly and is trying to force a deeply-unpopular Maduro into a recall election.

For the Catholic Church, however, the question is what it can learn from populism’s failures. One step forward would be for the Church in different Latin American nations to ask itself some serious questions about the degree to which populist language and preoccupations have shaped its engagement with political and economic issues.

One example is the constant references to “neoliberalism” invariably found in documents issued by Latin American bishop conferences. Throughout Latin America, neoliberalismo often functions as a synonym for unfettered markets. But it is also a straw man. Unfettered markets simply don’t exist, including in the United States.

One might also ask if some Catholics’ constant invocation of “neoliberalism” (or “imperialism,” “the anonymous influence of mammon”, “neoliberal lords of capital,” “markets that kill,” or name-your-populist-slogan) as a primary cause of Latin America’s problems reflects an unwillingness to accept that many of the region’s difficulties have resulted from choices made by Latin Americans. After all, the Chávezs, Kirchners, Peróns, Morales, Correas and Maduros of Latin America were all democratically elected. Perón wasn’t imposed upon Argentina by foreign corporations. No Western government forced Venezuela down its present path to anarchy. And if anyone’s propping up the increasingly brutal Maduros regime, it’s surely the crony-Communist prison-camp otherwise known as Cuba.

It’s an open question how many Latin American Catholic leaders would be willing to engage in such soul-searching. In many respects, it’s easier to chase phantoms or excoriate anonymous actors “out there.” The work of helping societies which take liberty and justice seriously to grow out of the rubble of populism is harder, less glamorous, and very much a long-term project—one which requires acceptance that preserving and promoting freedom, rule of law, and social justice rightly-understood actually requires restraints on the popular will.

The sad irony is that as populist movements and governments falter in Latin America, they’re on the march throughout the rest of the world. Given their recent experiences, Catholics throughout Latin America have a unique opportunity to help the universal Church respond to a phenomenon that represents a significant threat to nations which aspire to be free and just. In light, however, of its recent past and some of its on-going preoccupations, Latin American Catholicism’s ability to do so is presently, at best, uncertain.

Not long after the June 2000 publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Fr. Dollinger during an in-person conversation that there is still a part of the Third Secret that they have not published! “There is more than what we published,” Ratzinger said. He also told Dollinger that the published part of the Secret is authentic and that the unpublished part of the Secret speaks about “a bad council and a bad Mass” that was to come in the near future.

With reverence and with attention to common advantage and the dignity of persons, and as a husband and father, I consider that the section of Amoris Laetitia entitled “The Need for Sex Education” seriously fails parents at a time when parental rights regarding sex education are under serious and sustained attack in many nations of the world, and at the international institutions. This section spans more than five pages without making even one reference to parents, albeit parental rights are mentioned earlier in another context. On the other hand there is reference to “educational institutions”. Yet sex education is “a basic right and duty of parents” which “must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centres chosen and controlled by them” as your predecessor, Pope John Paul II, taught the faithful in Familiaris Consortio, Number, 37.

Your Holiness, Catholic Bishops’ Conferences around the world, including in Britain, are collaborating with our anti-life opponents in the birth control and sex education lobbies, in helping to impose corrupting sex education programmes on primary and secondary schoolchildren. Such programmes, including in Catholic schools, involve providing our children with access to abortion and contraception. Thus, Holy Father, the Bishops’ Christ-given authority, which we the faithful hold in such reverence, is being instrumentalised to scandalise and cause terrible harm to our children. Amoris Laetitia will serve to make this terrible situation even worse.

Holy Father, I believe, as all Catholics believe, that the Pope is Peter, the rock Christ chose on which to build His Church. The Pope serves the unchangeable truth of Christ’s teaching. However, Your Holiness, the Pope is not the master but the servant of the truth.

Your Holiness, once again with reverence and with attention to common advantage and the dignity of persons, as well as with my authority as a husband and father, I note that there are references to public adultery in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia which fail to point out the intrinsic evil of adultery. I consider that such references will result in scandalising little ones in the way contained in Jesus Christ’s warning in verse 92, chapter 9, of the Gospel of St Mark.

Even worse, Holy Father, Amoris Laetitia, the Apostolic Exhortation, at the very least, raises the possibility that adulterous sexual acts may be justifiable. This shows a lack of mercy because it denies Catholics the truth about right and wrong. It denies Catholics the knowledge they need to exercise true freedom, freedom from sin. It also shows a lack of mercy because it sends children the false message that marriage is not indissoluble. Arguably, Your Holiness, the most effective way of destroying children is to destroy marriage as an indissoluble lifetime union of a man and a woman.

Holy Father, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that certain actions are “intrinsically evil,” such things as adultery.

I believe, Your Holiness, as all Catholics believe, because Jesus Christ Himself taught, that marriage is indissoluble and, Jesus taught, if someone divorces or puts away their spouse and marries another, he or she commits adultery – which is considered a mortal sin, the kind of serious sin by which one cuts oneself off from God’s love. (Matthew, 19)

I believe, as all Catholics believe, because Jesus Christ Himself taught, that in going to Holy Communion we receive the body of Jesus Christ, God Himself: we receive life and the promise of eternal life. (John, 6:54)

Finally, Holy Father, I believe, as all Catholics believe the teaching of St Paul, that if a person eats and drinks the body and blood of Jesus Christ unworthily, we don’t receive life or grace, we eat and drink judgement to ourselves “not discerning the body of the Lord”. (Corinthians: 1,11.29)

Holy Father, I know lots of ordinary Catholics both in my family life and through my work. I know women and men who’ve been deserted by their spouse for another person and either left alone with children or left alone without their children. If that deserted spouse were then to see their wife or husband with a new partner, receiving the Body of Christ in Communion, that sends the message to everyone, including the children, that marriage is not indissoluble after all. This is destructive of the truth about marriage. It’s also damaging psychologically and spiritually, not least for the children.

Holy Father, with reverence and with attention to common advantage and the dignity of persons, I appeal to you to recognise the grave errors in the recently published Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, in particular those sections which will lead to the desecration of the Holy Eucharist and to the harming of our children, and to withdraw the Apostolic Exhortation with immediate effect.

Choosing Classical Education Over Common Core

On April 28, the National Catholic Register published an article by Peter Jesserer Smith on the growing number of Catholic schools and systems converting from conventional progressive education to classical — or perhaps we should say neo-classical — liberal arts education. While one hundred American sees, just over half, have elected to conform to Common Core, widespread rejection of the controversial curriculum is creating greater demand for an alternative to homeschooling, leading to more charter and non-profit startups.

The Problem of Education

Catholics aren’t the only ones returning to the trivium. Philip Kilgore, director of the nonsectarian Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter Schools Initiative, told Smith that “[parental] dissatisfaction with contemporary education has been driving the demand for a return to the classical tradition.” Says Kilgore, “I speak with so many people from every corner of this land who are eager to do something about the problem of education.”

Many people from various ideological backgrounds agree that American K-12 education is failing. Some, like Prof. Jack Schneider, would contest this, pointing to tests of limited scope, like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) test, that purport to show American schools as doing well. Others, like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, seem to recognize the problem only insofar as it affects the production of hire-ready future employees, as if the only worthwhile goal of education were to generate Homo oeconomicus.

The most commonly-perceived problem, however, is that the current systems produce moral and cultural illiterates, that the systems have abandoned teaching children how to think in favor of teaching them what to think. Writes Patrick J. Deneen:

We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. … Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).

Dorothy Sayers and the Art of Learning

The fact is, pedagogy went off the rails when the goal of education was shifted in the early 20th century from the development of the human person to the acquisition of “skills”. By the time the Grande Dame of mystery fiction, Dorothy L. Sayers, wrote her essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” in 1947, the damage was already in progress in Great Britain:

Is not the great defect of our education to-day … that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think? They learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play The Harmonious Blacksmith upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorised The Harmonious Blacksmith, he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle The Last Rose of Summer.

Educator Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg argues that modern education puts the cart before the horse. “The modern educational effort is to contrive artificial ways for students to focus on the acquisition of [the] attributes and ends of literacy instead of cultivating the intransitive arts [i.e., grammar, logic, and rhetoric] which comprise the means that enable the ends of literacy to bloom like the rose.”

In the same way, critical thinking isn’t a “skill” learned in a single-semester elective course but rather a virtuous habit of mind. If it is to develop properly, it must be cultivated over time as an intrinsic part of the education process. Before the student can learn any “subjects”, he must first learn how to learn. Otherwise, education simply becomes the exercise Ven. Abp. Fulton J. Sheen described as “the transferring of information from the teacher’s manual to the student’s notebook without passing through the mind of either.”

The aim of classical education is to form the whole person according to timeless, intrinsic values, rather than train a whole people to conform to a contemporary set of uniform standards. Thus, classical education responds to the universal truths of man rather than to the specific particulars of the multitude. The Common Core shrinks learning into a one-size-fits-all centralized set of information designed to achieve success by narrowing the focus of human learning to basic facts for measurable recall. This requires a reduction of the human person to an empirical calculus and ends in a lowest-common-denominator paradigm. Contrarily, classical education lifts the minds of all students to the highest aspirations of man, encompassing a student’s capacity for imaginative and emotional appreciation of reality, as well as for analytic and scientific habits of mind, toward the formation of character.

In the first stage, the “grammar” stage (usually grades 1 – 4), the concentration is on “learning the grammar of all subjects”. The students learn vast amounts of information through rote memorization, drills, songs, and stories.

In the second stage, the “logic” or “dialectic” stage (grades 5 – 8), the concentration is on reasoning, questioning, criticism, and the interior logic of the subjects. Students read primary sources rather than textbooks, and engage in discussion and debate.

In the “rhetoric” stage (grades 9 – 12), the focus is on self-expression. Students learn how to speak and write with force and originality, and begin to take courses in subjects that interest them.

In all three stages, the courses are taught as interrelated rather than isolated. Latin, and sometimes ancient Greek, is taught not only for their own sakes but also so students will learn about language — parts, structure, composition, and cultural elements; since they are taught right from the beginning, and taught to be spoken as well as read, students have less difficulty learning other foreign languages later. The emphasis on language in instruction rather than on visuals forces the brain to work harder, while the process of memorization insures longer retention of basic facts. Finally, since education in religion and morality is interconnected with the other disciplines, they’re more thoroughly understood; questions and doubts about the faith can be more easily hashed out when they arise, leading to higher retention.

The sciences, too, are taught from the very beginning. So are the fine arts; poetry, relatively abandoned in secular public schools, is celebrated in the classical school. Technology isn’t abandoned, but rather set in its proper place as a servant, its use disciplined. Classical schools generally combine the best in homeschooling with the social advantages of conventional schools. Above all, students are grounded in the Aristotelian-Thomist moral philosophy, in which the key to the good life is virtue.

Advancing in the Wrong Direction

The great advantage of the neo-classical education is that it’s connatural to the way children approach the mental world, by progressing from fact to theory and from the concrete to the abstract. Instead of being a passive recipient of an incessant barrage of words and images, the child is actively engaged; his mind is treated, not as a bucket to be filled, but as a muscle to be exercised. Classical education does this because it treats the student, not as “a cog in a machine”, but as a rational, moral, and social being.

Ironically, it also does a better job of filling the bucket.

Conventional progressive education theory doesn’t work because it doesn’t really seek to prepare children for adult life, or for any career beyond that of semi-skilled labor. If anything, it seeks, in the words of Michael Knox Beran, “to turn kids into little anarchs who — if the progressives’ daydreams come true — will grow up to overthrow the oppressive civilization into which they had the misfortune to be born.” In fact, the only thing saving our children from the most vapid excesses of constructionist theory is the good sense of teachers themselves, who care more about actually educating children than in producing the narcissistic Utopia of progressivist fantasies.

We have got into the bad habit of assuming that what’s new or modern is also better, even after direct experience has shown us it isn’t always so. We speak of “advances” and “progress”, forgetting that advancing and progressing are relative to where we start from rather than to where we want to go. You can advance in the wrong direction; progress is easier, and sometimes faster, when you go downhill.

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In sum, charter and non-profit schools offering a neo-classical liberal education offer the greatest potential for breaking the progressivist hegemony on education and preserving the best of Western culture’s intellectual heritage. They also offer the Catholic Church in America the most effective response to the decline of religiosity among the young, equipping them with the habits of mind that can defeat both the New Atheism and moralistic therapeutic deism.

Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G.K. Chesterton

Find the courage to proclaim Christ, … and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in Him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world – including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. - Pope Benedict XVI

God does not choose the qualified. He qualifies the chosen - Madre Teresa de Calcutá

God gave us ten commandments, not ten thousand. Why? Why not a more complete list of specifics? Because he wanted freedom and variety. Why do you think he created so many persons? Why not just one? Because he loves different personalities. He wants his chorus to sing in harmony, but not in unison - Peter Kreeft

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints. - C.S Lewis

I would like to remind everyone, especially everyone engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity - Papa Bento XVI

If medieval people talked less about their own dignity, it is because they were more concerned about God´s dignity; if modern people talk more about it, it is because they are more concerned with themselves - Edward Feser

If you find a perfect parish, you go ahead and join her, it won't be perfect anymore - Matthew Kelly

In fact, a fine distinction could be a flat contradiction - G.K.Chesterton

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. G. K. Chesterton

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith - Alexis de Tocqueville

Mittite in Dexteram Navigii Rete, et Invenietis (João 21,6)

Multiculturalism is the doctrine which says that no culture can ever claim precedence over any other. So there can be no hierarchy of values, and no society can uphold its historic traditions and values against any challenge - Melaine Phillips

Napoleon himself announced to the Pope Pius VII that he was going to destroy the Church, to which Pius VII responded, “Oh my little man, you think you’re going to succeed in accomplishing what centuries of priests and bishops have tried and failed to do!”

Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life on earth that the world will presently become uninhabitable for anybody but Saints. - Jacques Maritain

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience - Clive.S. Lewis

One was the view that stars are personal beings, governing our lives (astrology); the other the general theory that men have one mind between them (marxism); a view obviously opposed to immortality; that is, to individuality - G.K Chesteron

The difficulty of explaining “why I am Catholic” is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. - GK Chesterton

The divide in Western civilization isn't between rich and poor, red vs. blue, or the uneducated vs. the educated. It's God. God is the dividing line. You either believe God loves each of us and grants us inalienable rights or you believe that everything is negotiable including life - Matthew Archbold

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world! - Diane M. Korzeniewski

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him - Chesterton

The two most destructive heresies — and the two most popular — are angelism, confusing man with an angel by denying his likeness to animals, and animalism, confusing man with an animal by denying his likeness to angels - Peter Kreeft

The whole of history is a struggle between two loves: love of oneself to contempt of God; love of God to contempt of self, in martyrdom. We are in this struggle.

There are only three kinds of people: those who seek God and have found Him — these are wise and happy; those who seek God and have not yet found Him — these are wise and unhappy; and those who live without either seeking God or finding Him — and these are both unwise and unhappy. - Blaise Pascal

There are two sorts of people who might be tempted to think of death as a friend: those who think the nature of the human person has nothing to do with the body, and those who think it has everything to do with the body; in short, Platonists and materialists - Edward Feser

To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state - Edmund Burke on French Revolution

To be or not to be – that is the question”, then the massive medieval doctor (St. Thomas) does most certainly reply in voice of thunder, “To be – that is the answer - Chesterton